by Kyla Stone
Snow drifted from the slate-gray sky. Black clouds roiled low over the horizon. A strong wind whipped Gabriel’s dark curls into his eyes. The streets were mostly deserted. Only a few people scurried out of the cold, ducking their heads and tightening their coats. No one looked at them.
Everything was clean and new and shining. Several metalheads scrubbed the streets and moving sidewalks. Gleaming transports waited at the curb to ferry passengers anywhere they wanted to go. They passed a beautiful playground with manicured green hedges and modified flowers, blooming even in the snow.
Benjie could grow up in a place like this. They could all make a life here. A real life. Gabriel could see them in his mind’s eye, clear as day—Micah, Amelia and Silas, Willow and Finn, Celeste. Safe. Happy. Vibrant and alive.
But first, they had to get through this.
He clenched his jaw. No one was going to give that dream to them. They had to fight for it. Gabriel had to fight for it, to make it real for all the people he loved.
Gabriel stiffened. Two Coalition soldiers rounded a corner thirty yards away as they patrolled the grounds of the residential sector. The soldiers gave them only a cursory glance. The uniforms and, more importantly, the nighthawks’ escort, legitimized them.
And then there it was, stretching before him, the enormous thirty-foot plasma wall manned by the menacing cannons atop the ramparts. At the far left base of the wall rose a narrow tower, with a metal door leading to the nearest rampart.
At least two hundred soldiers manned the gates and ramparts. But most of them were facing the opposite direction, watching the pitched battle outside their gates from holopads streaming data from surveillance drones. The cannons were engaged in battle. Loud booms echoed from each missile blast.
Gabriel counted thirty nighthawk drones to their twelve. Several armored vehicles and tanks lined the interior perimeter of the wall. But many of the parking slots were empty. The Sanctuary had committed a large percentage of their forces to fight the Patriots’ decoy troops outside the walls.
Maybe Cleo and her mother were right. Maybe their sacrifices would be worth it. It was still too soon to tell.
Gabriel swallowed hard.
“Here goes nothing,” Jamal muttered beside him, repeatedly touching his lucky rabbit’s foot.
“Alpha Team Two, head to that apartment building fifty yards to the southeast,” Cleo said into her comm. “We’ll provide cover from the second story.” She jogged away without a backward glance, zigzagging between buildings, her squad sprinting behind her.
Gabriel maneuvered the Phantom behind an unmanned tank about seventy yards from the first cannon. Jamal swiped in a series of codes, activating the weapon and punching in the coordinates for the first strike. It purred to life with a low, vibrating hum. The huge barrel rotated and lifted.
Jamal pointed at a razor-thin laser bead. “We need to aim the laser at the target first. It will relay the exact coordinates to the Phantom’s system.”
Cerberus’s finger twitched on the trigger of his automatic rifle. “When can we start killing these assholes?”
“Permission to engage,” Jamal said into his comm. Sweat beaded his forehead and the top of his lip. The whites of his eyes were huge.
Gabriel put his hand on Jamal’s shoulder. “Take three deep breaths to calm yourself. Control your breathing, control your fear. Got it?”
Jamal nodded as their earpieces crackled. “Alpha Team Two is in position,” Cleo said. “Permission granted.”
Gabriel pushed the small button. The high energy radio frequency wave was invisible. He saw nothing but a green blinking light indicating the shot had been fired. Jamal used the laser and input the next coordinates. The barrel slid ten degrees to the left. Gabriel pushed the button again. The tiny light blinked green.
“How do we know it’s working?” he hissed.
“Watch the cannon,” Jamal said. “It’s not firing.”
Cerberus let out an impressed curse.
Jamal and Gabriel took out three more cannons in the space of two minutes. Three more to go.
But the soldiers were growing suspicious. They rushed along the ramparts, shouting and gesturing wildly. Several tech-repair bots clustered around the first two cannons, performing diagnostics tests. On the ground, the soldiers were suddenly alert, fanning out in formation, searching for the saboteur.
The first bullets pinged against the Phantom’s shield wings. A pulse blast struck the hood of the tank two feet to Gabriel’s right. He flinched and flung himself behind the shield.
They’d been discovered.
A trio of enemy nighthawks zoomed toward them. The hacked drones guarding the Phantom swiveled their gun turrets and opened fire. Two drones went down in a spiraling blaze. The third one let out a torrent of bullets, striping the closest hacked nighthawk with holes. The drone screeched as it careened and spun before striking the roof of the tank and crumpling to the ground, now only a hunk of twisted, smoldering metal.
“Fall back!” someone on Alpha Team One grunted.
“Don’t you dare move until the mission is completed!” Cleo roared in their ears.
Gabriel and Jamal crouched behind the Phantom’s left shield wing. Cerberus ducked behind the other side, using the narrow slots in the shield to shoot. Seven Patriots huddled behind the tank, opening fire when they could. A few others had retreated to the residential apartments on their left.
“Coming in hot,” came the voice of the chopper pilot.
“Hold on tight,” General Reaver added. “A few more minutes and we’ll drill these assholes a new one.”
The remaining two cannons shattered the air with several explosions directed at the Patriots on the opposite side of the wall. Jamal sighted the laser, relaying the coordinates. The Phantom adjusted its aim, and Gabriel struck the button with his fist. The green light flashed.
“One more,” Jamal panted. “We’ve got to get the last one!”
A platoon of soldiers closed in from their exposed right flank. A pulse blast ricocheted off the shield. It was built tough, but it couldn’t withstand many more hits like that.
A rain of fire from the second-story windows of the apartments above the Coalition soldiers dropped half of them in a matter of seconds. One of their squads. A nighthawk rose rapidly and released a barrage of bullets, taking out the remaining five soldiers.
“Twelve down,” Cleo hissed in his ear.
Across the field, several Coalition soldiers had leaped into armored vehicles and tanks. A single shot from a tank and they were goners. Gabriel estimated they had less than a minute.
Jamal sent the coordinates for the last cannon, the one furthest to the right, above the tower. Gabriel pushed the button.
“Mission accomplished,” Cerberus said. “Cover us, Alpha Team Three. We’re about to hightail it outta here.”
Jamal ducked as a shrieking grenade sailed over their heads. “Go! Go! Go!”
“Wait!” Gabriel cried. He pointed at the blinking light. It was red. “Something happened. It didn’t work. That cannon is still active.”
“General Reaver is less than a minute out!” Cleo shouted. “We need her air assault to get our men clear. Take care of that cannon RIGHT NOW. Do you hear me?”
Gabriel yanked his tactical goggles over his eyes and clicked the zoom function. He found the tower and looked up. On the ramparts, directly in front of the last cannon, a young woman huddled with two trembling children.
“What the hell?” he breathed. Nausea swirled in his gut. What were they doing there? He zoomed in close enough to see the fear etched into the woman’s face, the streak of bubble-gum pink in the girl’s fluttering blond hair, the snow dusting the little boy’s curls. He couldn’t have been older than four-years-old, with a round cherub face and wide, startled blue eyes.
The woman clutched an old-fashioned picnic basket to her chest. She’d been bringing a soldier lunch—a husband, a friend, a brother. They’d gotten trapped in the sudden attack,
and simply froze.
The chopper thudded in the distance, roaring closer.
Jamal looked frantically from the ramparts to the Phantom and back again. He scrubbed his forehead with the back of his arm. “They’re blocking the sensor panel!”
“Shoot!” Cleo screamed in his ear. “Shoot them! What are you waiting for? Shoot!”
Without a word, Cerberus swung his automatic rifle and opened fire.
Time slowed. The thoughts shrieking through Gabriel’s head were disjointed, chaotic, mingled with fear and panic and adrenaline. But the image that materialized before his eyes was not of the battlefield, the cannon, or even Cerberus’s rifle. It was the little girl in the yellow bathrobe he saw, her black hair fanned out around her head, perfect and innocent and dead.
He’d lived with that horror—that guilt—every single day for over six months.
Some death was inevitable. He knew that. The evil in this world used violence as its weapon. To fight evil, violence was necessary. But he would never again blindly follow any cause or leader. He would never again act against his own conscience.
He knew himself, and he knew his code. He would do everything in his power to never kill an innocent—or to allow innocents to be killed under his watch.
There would be consequences. Of that, he was certain.
Consequences be damned.
“No!” Gabriel tackled Cerberus and hurled him to the ground. He wrenched the gun from Cerberus’s hands and smashed the butt across his nose. “They’re just kids!”
Cerberus grunted. Blood streamed from his broken nose and leaked over his lips. He wiped at it with a furious grimace. “It had to be done.”
Gabriel looked up in alarm. The woman was half-slumped over the rampart, unmoving. The children were no longer visible. Behind where they had stood only a moment ago, two sprays of bright red blood smeared the carapace of the cannon.
He hadn’t been able to save them.
“When are you gonna learn?” Cleo snarled into his comm. “Anyone not us is the enemy. It’s kill or be killed!”
There was no time to react. No time to let the true horror of it sink in.
The chopper roared closer, rising above the plasma wall.
“Retreat!” Jamal screamed into his comm. “The last cannon is still active!”
But it was too late. The cannon swiveled. Fired. The missile streaked toward the chopper.
The missile struck the cockpit and exploded in a fiery blast. The second shot tore an enormous, jagged hole in the metal frame. Smoke poured from the cabin and exploded windows. The shriek of tearing metal and shattering glass rent the air.
The chopper spun, trailing thick black smoke as it groaned and shrieked. It careened over the plasma wall, jerking crazily, rotors spinning uselessly. It plunged to the ground in a cacophony of screeching, groaning metal.
The chopper was no longer recognizable as anything other than a charred and broken wreck of machinery. General Reaver and everyone inside that hoverchopper were dead.
Jamal’s eyes widened in stunned disbelief. “I’m going in!”
“No!” Gabriel shouted. “They’re already gone!”
Jamal didn’t listen. Maybe he didn’t even hear Gabriel’s warning. He ran out from the shelter of the shield wings. On the other side of the flaming wreckage, a Coalition soldier took aim with a pulse rifle.
“Jamal!” Gabriel rose to his knees, gun lifted. He peered through the scope, but the smoke and rippling heat from the blaze distorted his view. He fired. Missed. Aimed again.
The Coalition soldier fired. The blast slammed into Jamal’s chest. A second and third blast followed in immediate succession. The blow knocked him off his feet. Jamal landed on his back, smoke hissing from his mangled sternum. His armored vest had withstood the first blast, but the barrage had been too much.
Jamal Carter gazed blankly up at the sky. His eyes were open but dull and unseeing. Around his neck, the white rabbit’s foot was black with soot, drenched in blood.
Gabriel stared in horror.
“You did this!” Cleo screamed into Gabriel’s ear. “You killed my mother!”
“I didn’t!” Gabriel choked out.
“That cannon shouldn’t have worked!”
Sorrow skewered him at the pain and anguish in her voice. “I didn’t intend—”
“You bastard.” Her breath hitched, breaking off a sob. “If you see me, you better run. The next time I see you, I’ll kill you. First Sloane, then I’m coming for you.”
Gabriel knew she meant every word.
20
Amelia
The explosion blasted Amelia off her feet. Heat struck her with the force of a brick wall. She went flying backward. She landed hard on her back on the platform, the wind knocked out of her lungs.
Something heavy pressed against her. She gasped for breath, forcing herself to feel her arms, her stomach, her thighs, her scalp. A tiny piece of shrapnel bit into her shin, another her calf. She was lucky. The guard who’d been dragging her off the stage wasn’t. His body had protected hers from the blast.
The entire square was hazy with smoke. Her ears rang.
She pushed the guard’s body off—it wasn’t Logan or Harper, she realized dully—and stumbled to her feet.
In the square, people were screaming, shoving, running in every direction. Hundreds of people shrieking in terror, grabbing their children, fleeing for their lives. Panic and chaos spread from the square like a terrible cancer.
Ash and dust and smoke drifted in the air. Several bodies littered the platform. Across the snow-covered grass a few dozen yards away, Senator Steelman clutched at General Daugherty, holding him up as blood dribbled down his left leg. Their clothes were torn and blackened with soot.
Someone groaned at her feet. She looked down. A guard clutched an arm that was no longer there. Blood was everywhere. Too much. There was nothing she could do.
“I’m—sorry.” She turned away, sickened and horrified.
Vera lay collapsed on the platform, half-covered by a female guard missing a chunk of her head. Amelia knelt beside them. She pushed the guard off Vera’s body.
Blood and soot streaked the woman’s face. She wasn’t moving. Her tight bun had come loose. Several strands of her black hair were snagged in one of her earrings. A spiraling snowflake landed on her cheek, melting instantly. More snow fell from the sky, thick and silent.
Amelia pressed two fingers to Vera’s throat. Nothing. She was gone.
Amelia rocked back on her heels. A dark sucking energy tunneled through her insides, threatening to pull her under like a black hole.
Movement snagged the corner of her eye. She turned around. President Sloane was hobbling up the marble steps of BioGen headquarters, followed by her hulking head of security, Bale.
“Amelia!”
She turned back slowly, painfully. This was a dream, a horrible nightmare, something too terrible and ugly to be real. But she of all people knew better. It was all too real.
“Amelia!” Below the platform, fighting against the crowd of bodies, she glimpsed Micah and Silas.
They were here. They were coming for her.
“Amelia!” another voice called her—this one closer, hoarse and rusty with pain. Her father, still on his knees in the ruin of the platform, blood smearing his face, staining his chest, dripping onto the platform. Shrapnel jutted from his shoulders, torso, and upper thighs.
She froze, horrified.
Declan laughed. It was an awful, grating rasp. He shifted, jerking his chains, but they wouldn’t give an inch. His guards were dead or had fled from the platform, but he was still trapped. “I knew you’d survive. You always were stronger than I gave you credit for.” He coughed, blood bubbling from his mouth. “Stronger than your mother ever was.”
Micah scrambled onto the platform. Silas was right behind him. He leaned down and grasped her shoulders. His glasses were skewed, his wavy hair disheveled, but it was Micah. He’d come for her.
Everywhere was chaos. Explosions booming in the distance. Soldiers running, shooting. People screaming, ducking, fleeing for cover. Smoke spewing in a thickening haze.
“Amelia! Don’t leave me!” Declan shouted. His voice was full of fear and desperation. “Help me!”
“We have to go!” Micah grabbed her arms. Still numb, stunned, her ears ringing, she managed to nod. He pulled her to her feet and half-dragged her down the platform stairs.
“What the hell happened?” Silas demanded.
“Kadek told us it was a flash bomb.” Micah hooked his arm around her waist, propping her up. She leaned gratefully against his shoulder. “He said it would stun them, create confusion, not kill anyone. Something happened.”
“The little ferret-faced snot betrayed us, is what happened.” Silas scowled. “I’m gonna kill him.”
A Coalition soldier shouted at them from the platform, stumbling down the steps, a gun gripped in one hand. Silas aimed, about to shoot him.
“No!” Amelia croaked. She lurched forward and grabbed Silas’s arm. “That’s Logan. He—he helped me.”
Silas didn’t lower his gun. He stared at Logan warily. “Whose side are you on?”
“The side of the truth.” Logan raised his hands, palms out, though he didn’t drop his gun. His jaw was set, his expression impassive, but those green eyes flashed with anger—and defiance. “I suspected something about the required anti-viral shots. Amelia helped me put the pieces together. And what she said today on that platform—she’s right. We can do better than this.”
“Silas,” Micah said. “Amelia vouches for him.”
Silas lowered his gun. “Alright, then. Welcome to the club.”
Their voices came distant and fuzzy. It was hard to make sense of their words. All she could see was her father chained to the platform, his stricken face, his terror.